Takigawa of the Ogiya Pleasure House
Utagawa Toyokuni I Japanese
Not on view
Robed in a splendid floral kimono, the famous courtesan, Takigawa of the Ogiya Pleasure House, sits before a hanging scroll portrait of Ono no Komachi in her late years. Ono no Komachi, a great poet of the Heian period, was admired for her beauty. Her legendary decline into decrepit old age was taken as a paradigm for the Buddhist concept of the ephemerality of life and its pleasures. Toyokuni shows the two famous beauties—one his contemporary and the other her predecessor by many centuries—facing each other in mirror image. This striking juxtaposition accentuates the dramatic contrast between them; Takigawa appears in the full bloom of her beauty, emphasized by the vivacious wildflowers which flow through her kimono, while the old woman Ono no Komachi leans on her staff among drab ditch reeds in the colorless hanging scroll. Thus, the great beauty of Takagawa is threatened by a pungent memento mori.
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